


Inverness

by ThatWriterKid



Series: Place Without Plot (Domestic Sketches of Aziraphale and Crowley from a Bored Grad Student) [1]
Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Drabble, Drabble Collection, Fluff, Ineffable Partners, Inverness, M/M, Scotland, World Travel, cawdor, ineffable husbands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:53:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21807757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatWriterKid/pseuds/ThatWriterKid
Summary: “You are missing the scenery,” said Aziraphale, sitting beside him, beside the window. Back straight. Eyes as bright and blue as ever. Ridiculously charmed with the countryside. Which was just sheep, Crowley thought. Sheep and farms and a bit more vertical in places. They’d spent centuries pinging across this country like the ball in an ineffable game of table tennis, constantly moving by foot and by car and—his buttocks still ached in empathy for the past—horseback.“I’m familiar with the look of sheep.”
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Place Without Plot (Domestic Sketches of Aziraphale and Crowley from a Bored Grad Student) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1633759
Comments: 7
Kudos: 34





	1. Train to Inverness

**Author's Note:**

> With the exception of the angel and the demon this is literally just a description of my train ride on a weekend up to a cottage outside Inverness.

Crowley was bent into a checkmark, legs up on the carriage table and his back contorted to fit into the plastic, scrappy seat. His phone was out of battery. It had been for like half an hour, but he wasn’t going to forfeit his new high score in Flappy Bird, so he was having none of it.

“You are missing the scenery,” said Aziraphale, sitting beside him, beside the window. Back straight. Eyes as bright and blue as ever. Ridiculously charmed with the countryside. Which was just sheep, Crowley thought. Sheep and farms and a bit more vertical in places. They’d spent centuries pinging across this country like the ball in an ineffable game of table tennis, constantly moving by foot and by car and—his buttocks still ached in empathy for the past—horseback.

“I’m familiar with the look of sheep.” Crowley did not see the appeal.

“You’re familiar with- with that _silly_ telephone,” said Aziraphale, with enough vehemence to imply that _silly_ was an understatement, but enough familiarity that Crowley knew he’d already been forgiven. Crowley leaned into Aziraphale’s shoulder a little, a reminder: _I’m here, remember, I came on this trip for you._ The angel smiled, did that little shifting wiggle of his shoulders that showed he was pleased. “I’ll never understand your fascination with that… thing.”

“You’d love it if you gave it a try. I’d lose you forever to Candy Crush.”

“No. You wouldn’t.”

Right. Ever since the end-of-the-world-that-wasn’t, Aziraphale had been going rather hard on the whole _our side_ thing. They were still getting used to that. Six thousand years assuming that eventually, the angel would fuck back off to Heaven, and now he couldn’t make jokes even _tangential_ to the topic. It wasn’t a bad thing. Just took some getting used to.

It didn’t require an answer. Just a smile.

The train to Inverness filled quickly. When they’d left Edinburgh, the cheap seats had been nearly empty; each stop let on a character or two, or three, or four. The tables filled first, then the row seats, as the overhead shelving cluttered up with bags and backpacks and market bags full of wrapped presents. ‘Twas the season.

Somehow no one joined their table, no matter how enthusiastically Aziraphale beamed at them, and eventually two new row seats appeared behind them to make up for the ones Crowley was so selfishly hogging. Instead the humans milled around them and talked and gossiped and—

_Oh, I think he fancies it, honestly, he just pretends he hates the attention—_

_—you walk right up to the top and it’s the most beautiful view—_

_—hi how are you hi how are you hi how are you hi— Relax, darling, just relax, enjoy your trip—_

Aziraphale glanced over his shoulder at the last, a poor overstimulated young man and his father, who was doing his best to help but still had to battle against the jostle and hubbub of the carriage. The angel brushed a bit of lint off his jacket. Suddenly father and son found their table to be less chaotic, less alarming.

“Oy. You can’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Now I’ve got to go and inconvenience someone, even you out.”

“We don’t _have_ to, you know.”

Crowley raised an eyebrow.

“That woman in the… hat is thinking infuriatingly eugenic thoughts, if you’re looking for someone to inconvenience. Have at it.”

“Now you’re just _using_ me,” Crowley complained, but suddenly her cell phone battery was dead, and his was full again. The angel was right, of course. It wouldn’t be any fun ruining someone’s day if they didn’t deserve it just a _little_ bit.

They passed through the country, the low and rolling hills, with the angled sunlight of late December casting golden shadows over the Highlands. Distant pines contrasted against the midday sunset—obsidian arrows against pink and blue and grey. They dipped in and out of tunnels like pens into an inkwell, brief forays into the black. They passed villages—Perth and Pilochry—made of houses from a dozen bygone days, Georgian and Victorian and modern and suburbian and sometimes a dozen at once. Mountains with snowcaps rose on the horizon and fell behind the nearer hills. The grass was yellow with winter, the trees marbled with green and brown.

Crowley had died in Flappy Bird and put aside his phone eventually. Aziraphale had not moved from his admiration of the windows. Crowley sighed and relaxed a little further and his head leaned against Aziraphale’s shoulder, now, rather than a simple lean.

“Why did you insist on the train, Angel?”

“Other than wanting to ensure we arrived in one piece?”

“Other than that.”

“It’s still here.” No one would overhear them, but Aziraphale’s voice was quiet anyway. “It nearly wasn’t.”

Again, no response required: Aziraphale knew Crowley understood he was only partially talking about the landscape. In the Bentley they’d have been alone together—which was beautiful, perfect, something they would _never_ get tired of. But they would have been alone. Here, they were not alone.

The father and son had been joined by a woman and her small child, and the son was bonding with them over an ipad. A person of indiscriminate gender was tucked against a window, scribbling in a journal and wearing a sweatervest that would make Aziraphale proud. People all around them were drinking coffee and trading holiday plans and moving bags so the trolley could get through and _existing_. Wholeheartedly and completely here.

The sun had set, but the light lingered, and they hit the snow line—first in the distant hills, then in patches in the dark grass, then a blossoming white spotted with trees. The Highlands rose around them, true mountains now, great slabs of snow and rock with clouds that sank, low and foggy, into the valleys between them. Even Crowley was a little impressed. He relinquished his phone to Aziraphale for the price of exactly one terrible picture that got more of the seats in it than the mountains. When they got home, they’d frame it.

It hadn’t been Crowley’s idea to spend the holidays here. He’d have been happy to stay in Sussex with their usual tradition—cocoa, books, a general disbelief that no one was going to dump holy water all over him—but the angel had been struck with a particular sort of wanderlust lately. So here they were.

Kingussie. Aviemore. _Please mind the gap when alighting from this train._ The night was spilling like ink into the sky. Stonework gave way to lights nestled in the darkness, villages transformed into scattered diamonds. A man in a red tracksuit got on the train and sat across the corridor, his infant granddaughter in tow. She wore neon pink and curls to rival the angel’s. He held his hands around her, infinitely careful as she tried to learn to walk on a table on the train. She fell—often—but her grandfather caught her, and she had a downright beatific smile. Crowley’s heart warmed and softened at the edges. He took Aziraphale’s hand under the table.

Stars outside, now, a trip down memory lane that came in the form of icicle lights and streetlamps. The universe hadn’t been lit with the neon of a gas station or inflatable Santa Clauses, but somehow the train seemed to be gliding through creation, lost at the beginning of the world.

_This is Aviemore. This train is for Inverness. Next stop is Inverness._

Crowley closed his eyes to nap, well aware that Aziraphale would be keenly aware of the evenness of Crowley’s unconscious breath and the closeness of their bodies. He didn’t sleep. Aziraphale was right. There was too much humanity around them not to bask in it a little.

The person in the sweatervest closed their book and they both felt a little pang of heartbreak echo through the car: heartbreak, loss, an echo of a grey day and a bandstand at the end of the world. Some healing loss, some missing piece. It vanished when they smiled at the baby—a smile that rosy could solve any problem in the world, surely—and angel and demon both felt a human identity swell in their chests. Someone squeezed the other’s hand, and then a man in a crew cut started in on a loud phone call in French and the angel’s face furrowed in concentration and Crowley chuckled, because of course Aziraphale was trying to remember enough to listen in.

It earned him a nudge with a rather-entangled-by-now elbow. “Now I thought you were sleeping.”

“We’re nearly there. Don’t have the time.”

“So you’re just watching me, then.”

“You’re entertainment.” In a moment he would get his legs off the table, even, and stretch, and crack his back loudly enough to make everyone around them wince. They’d pull into the station and Aziraphale would insist on enduring a _taxi_ to their cottage, and Crowley would break the pay machines at the barrier to the bathrooms just to get his angel’s stupid enthusiasm out of the air a little, and then they’d both unpack their bags at different times—secretive—since they were currently pretending they hadn’t bought each other gifts.

But not yet.

He could pretend to sleep on Aziraphale’s shoulder for a little bit longer.


	2. Walk to Cawdor Castle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley and Aziraphale take a walk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As with the last piece, this is based off real-world experience, except I couldn't miracle away the padlock and hope the goat did eventually make it home safely.

It was a twenty-seven-minute walk from the cottage they’d rented to Cawdor castle, but Aziraphale was convinced they could get there quicker. There was a path, you see, a _clear_ footpath that Crowley’s device didn’t know about, but you could see it plain as day on the satellite map. It was some sort of walking path through the woods, and wouldn’t that be lovelier than dodging cars along the road?

Crowley was not invested in dodging cars along the road—although he wasn’t invested in walking to the castle in the first place—so they ignored the directions. It was a left in front of the cottage, down a few signs that read very clearly _public property_ , then a path through the woods. The residences here were absolutely beautiful. All gardens and hedges and flowers, although the plants were dry for the winter. But clearly very well-maintained. And at least _one_ of the properties had hedges that would have benefited from some group therapy with Crowley’s plants: they could hear an older gentleman cursing at them in a braw thunder as they passed. The demon threw the quivering foliage a glare as they walked past.

Hard to put the effort in for _that_ , though. He was in a good mood.

“Did you ever get up here?” he asked, fending off the inevitable lecture from the angel with a question. “You know, while he was Thane? Or king?”

“Oh, no. Too busy running around in the damp with you. In that _dreadful_ armor.” Aziraphale shuddered at the thought. Literally. Show-off. “Did you?”

“Nah.” Crowley rolled his shoulders. It was mostly quiet, save for the cursing of the man at the hedges, but they could still hear the roar of the highway from here. “Was up here during Culloden. And… after.”

“Really? I. I didn’t know.”

“On and off. Poked my head in. Appearance’s sake.”

“Explains—”

“Yeah, it gave me the idea. World felt… shaky. People getting’ thrown about with no insurance. Fire and flame. Hit close to home.”

They took a right—there was a brief and breathtaking view of the valley with the mountains beyond—and then there was a left, and there was _indeed_ a path where Aziraphale had insisted there was one. Crowley suddenly remembered how much he _loved_ pavement. He never appreciated a good, solid road until there weren’t any to take.

They shouldn’t have expected anything less than the muddy pit before them, of course. It hadn’t rained _too_ recently, but there was snowmelt, and this was Scotland after all. The path was in all right shape, but it was pocketed with bog, and there wasn’t a good way to cross _this_ muck without getting it on them. Angel and demon both hesitated.

“Miss the car yet?” Crowley asked.

“Oh, hush. Where’s your adventurous spirit?” Crowley raised an eyebrow. Aziraphale tutted, shimmied himself into a pose that said _yes, I am very definitely going to walk straight through this mud pit, any minute now, good sir!_ and promptly hesitated. “Only, well. I really would prefer not to get it all over these shoes.”

The demon sighed. He waved his hand as though letting Aziraphale ahead, a simple _after you_ , and there was a board across the pit. The angel smiled broadly, and the shimmying of his shoulders relaxed into a pleasurable wave as he crossed from the safety of a miraculous bridge. Crowley followed. He didn’t need the dirt either, after all.

“The castle wasn’t here when _he_ was either,” said Aziraphale. “Macbeth was actually hundreds of years before the castle.”

“Where did he stay, then?” South of them, on their left: not _old_ forest, but wild forest, at least, an attempt to come back from the clearing of the land. Red, dry ferns in their winter state, minty-green growth sprawling on the northern faces of the trees. Foliose lichens dangled and scattered around the forest—bunching in branches and climbing the trunks—with paler, crustose lichens that sprawled in rippling circles on the rocks, the logs.

The angel frowned. “You know, I’m not sure. But I’d still like to see it. Do the _tourist_ thing. It did look pretty in the photographs on the World Wide Web.”

“World Wide—no one calls it that anymore, angel. It’s the internet. _Not_ a proper noun.” On their right, a stone wall had fallen into disuse, now pillowy and puffed with vibrant moss. An altogether different forest lay to the north of the path: instead of wild trees and ferns and growths, a grid of towering trees—perhaps conifers? But not evergreens—had been planted, and were now reaching for the sky.

Aziraphale stopped to examine an eggshell that had fallen from somewhere, had nestled between the fallen needles of the trees. He smiled at it. He was downright _angelic_ at it. Crowley could feel the angel’s thoughts radiating from him: something nauseating about the circle of life and the joy of youth. It was disgustingly beautiful. Crowley managed to pull the besotted stare off his face before the angel looked up again.

The path, it was increasingly clear, had been formed by cart wheels and maintained by tires. It tapered off into a staging area for some industrial business that was closed for the week-end, and continued across the lot as a road. They passed through a small herd of unliving machinery—perhaps some sort of logging situation, Aziraphale mused, that would explain the grid of trees—and Crowley miracled up another bridge before they were once again beside the wood, occasionally stepping aside to let cars go past.

Crowley’s hand found the angel’s, again. They did that a lot these days.

Once they were on the proper road, they consulted Google Maps again and tried to figure out the best course to the castle. Crowley insisted it was just through an arch between two buildings—“We can _ignore_ the sign, angel, there’s no one here, we just walked _through_ private property,”—but trespassing again was, for some reason, just too much, so they went a little further down the road to circle around the offending property. They ended up walking past a field full of black goats, framed by the Highlands and the blue sky and the chill wind. The road curved south up ahead, and at the bend they should have been able to get to the castle grounds.

Crowley did _not_ like goats.

They had _eyes_ , was it. Reminded him too much of his boss. The horns, too. All off in weird places. Hooves. Not his thing. Not his _scene_ , goats.

And one was out of the enclosure. A big one. Black as the night and with no discernable method of _having_ gotten out. The fence was secure, the gate was padlocked shut, and all the other goats were _inside_ , where they were supposed to be. 

Crowley made the noise.

“Ngk—”

“What? Oh! Oh, hello, you sweet boy, what are you doing out here?” Aziraphale went right to it, of course, and looked quite put out when it darted anxiously away. “I think he’s lost!”

“No he’s not, he knows exactly where he is! The pasture’s right _there._ ”

“How on Earth did you get out, my dear?” Aziraphale turned around, looking for a way to rescue the wayward soul, but no opportunities presented themselves. Crowley was getting increasingly suspicious of the creature, so Aziraphale stepped away. “Nothing to be done, I suppose.”

“It’s fine. They’re clever. Come on.”

“Hm.”

Aziraphale said nothing when they gave the goat a wide berth, and took his demon’s arm as they wandered up the hill toward the marked parking area. It wasn’t far—just behind some houses—but there wasn’t a car in sight. Aziraphale’s shoulders slumped.

“Oh, it’s closed!” The gate into the property was shut and locked, as was the gate to the gardens. Aziraphale sighed and peered through the latter. It _was_ beautiful, like something out of a fairy tale. “I thought you said it was open.”

“The hours listed on the app say it’s open.” Crowley fiddled with his phone. “The website’s different. Looking at it. Says it’s shut for winter repairs.”

Aziraphale didn’t understand what an app was or why it would be different from the World Wide Web, but he assumed it made sense to Crowley. He sighed, dejected. “Well, I suppose that’s that.”

“We could still go in.” There was something indulgent in the way Crowley reacted to the angel’s disappointment, a richness in that empathy that reminded Aziraphale of devil’s food cake and well-aged wine. He wasn’t sure why he felt that so strongly, but he was sure they were both aware of it. Aziraphale didn’t need to look to see the pout.

“No, no, there’s no point if no one’s there. We are _tourists_ , we aren’t straying off the beaten path.”

“Isn’t that literally how we—”

 _Ba-a-a-a-a_.

Crowley jumped a foot in the air when the escaped goat bleated behind him. He bowled into Aziraphale, knocking the angel against the gate to the garden, and somehow the angel found himself in _front_ of his friend, facing the goat like a human shield. He sighed, because if he didn’t sigh he would laugh aloud, and Crowley would sulk about that.

“Let’s at least get _him_ back where he’s supposed to be.”

They managed it somehow. Aziraphale miracled open the padlock and Crowley herded it toward the gate. There were a number of strangled noises—Aziraphale wasn’t sure how much Crowley herded the goat versus how much the goat herded Crowley—but eventually the angel managed to lure the poor thing back into the enclosure, and he slipped out without letting any of the other animals escape. The lock clicked shut and the angel looked immensely pleased with himself.

“See? A little hard work and—”

The goat hopped over the fence.

Crowley and Aziraphale both stared at it. It bleated, turned, and nudged the fence woefully. The other goats finally seemed to realize it was on the wrong side and wandered over, curious. There was a quiet, distressed chorus of bleating.

Crowley burst out laughing. Aziraphale threw up his hands, exasperated, elbows tight at his side. He turned and walked back towards the main road, definitively giving up. There was only so much a person could do.

Crowley followed and caught his arm. “Read a book once,” he said.

“Did you? Once? I’m so proud.”

“Shut up. It was satire, doesn’t count. Great writer, though. Said Christians would have turned out a lot different if Jesus had been a goatherd instead of a shepherd.”

“He was a carpenter,” said Aziraphale.

“Nonono, it was satire. Character was a literal shepherd. Jesus was a metaphorical one.”

“Why didn’t he just make the character a goatherd?”

Crowley decided it wasn’t worth the effort. “Which way are we going back? Main road or your shortcut?”

“Hm.” Aziraphale squeezed his arm. “The path less traveled by, I think.”

“Right,” said Crowley. “Adventurous spirit.”


End file.
